Insanely Bad Connection Problems

IBangU · 11-09-2008, 02:29

Hi All

I have been having terrible connectivity / speed issues for a couple of months and any help anyone can give would be great. I will try to give as much information as I can.

First a general description of the problem.

Am on the 8MB Virgin ADSL Service, but am currently only receiving speeds of about 0.1 MB, though it has been as high as 2.5 MB. In addition I am getting cut off over 20-50 times per day. Recently I changed to Virgin from BT as I was having the same type of issue there, and I thought it was BT's faut and changing hasnt made any difference. Prior to that, I had been getting decent (2-3 MB) connection speeds with no connectivity issues whatsoever for a few years. I'm using a Netgear router and connected by Ethernet cable but, as I say, the problem was similar on the BT home Hub. This is why I have not contacted customer support.

Have done all the normal things like virus checks, anti spyware, but my wife's computer (which is on wireless) also has the same speed problems.

Our phone and ADSL cable are connected via a microfilter into the wall socket, as they have always been. The phone works ok

Im in London and running Windows XP.

I tried to do a line test as per the forum FAQ but got the message "target IP does not respond to ICMP ping"

If anybody has any ideas, even if they can't solve it, but where do I go from here, it would be much appreciated .

---------- Post added at 01:29 ---------- Previous post was at 01:25 ----------

Traceroute to www.bbc.co.uk results :

1 62.30.31.130 (62.30.31.130) 0.733 ms
2 194.117.133.226 (194.117.133.226) 0.745 ms
3 rabat-pos150.network.virginmedia.net (194.117.136.178) 8.586 ms
4 puebla-pos20.network.virginmedia.net (194.117.136.150) 8.597 ms
5 gsr-hsd-gw2-pos90.network.virginmedia.net (194.117.136.166) 8.647 ms
6 *
7 osr-hsd-gw3.network.virginmedia.net (194.117.136.146) 8.820 ms
8 bbc-gw0-linx.prt0.thdoe.bbc.co.uk (195.66.224.103) 8.865 ms
9 212.58.238.153 (212.58.238.153) 8.772 ms
10 te12-1.hsw1.cwwtf.bbc.co.uk (212.58.239.234) 9.795 ms

IBangU · 12-09-2008, 00:21

Any thoughts at all?

CrowmanUK · 12-09-2008, 00:36

It could be that one of your neighbours has put in a wireless device, phone or router or something else that is on a similar channel to yours, have you tried changing channels on the router? Also have you got the microfilters on all the phone sockets that you are using?
I'm not sure which netgear router you're using but google or the manual should tell you how to change it, the router could be on the way out too so try borrowing one and giving that a whirl, lastly Virgin ADSL is bad, download too much and you get traffic managed for a week, between 3pm and midnight, down to 8K/sec, just above dial up speeds.

---------- Post added at 23:36 ---------- Previous post was at 23:33 ----------

Something else to try while I'm thinking about it is to wire into the router with a cable just to test whether its the wireless connection thats going down or the connection to the adsl

IBangU · 12-09-2008, 01:28

Thanks crowman. I'm definitely not being traffic managed. It's no better at 3 am for example. I hardly download anything and it was like this from day 1 of me being with Virgin and also when I was with BT for about the last two months. The netgear wireless router is brand new and I had the same problem on the home hub with BT so I dont think it's that. Microfilters are on.

I dont know what you mean by changing the channel of the router but I could look into that.

---------- Post added at 00:28 ---------- Previous post was at 00:00 ----------

Changed me router from Channel 11 to Channel 1 but didn't make any difference according to speedtest.net

I still get 128kbps, about 1/8th of a Megabite.

I could actually live with that cruddy speed if the connection didn't drop as a result...

CrowmanUK · 12-09-2008, 10:57

Try wiring into the router with a cable from your pc then mate, that should check whether its the wireless connection that is dropping, if its that then you might have a duff router, if its the adsl connection thats dropping then it could be a problem with your line, noise or something like that.

IBangU · 12-09-2008, 11:06

Yeah I'm on an Ethernet cable from PC to router. Its the second router in 2 months so prob not that. Maybe noise on the line is possible, but can make phone calls clearly with no crackle noise...

carl2k2 · 12-09-2008, 18:20

I'm on cable service 2mb, and at somepoint I had worse speeds, it was that bad I could even browse google, the download speed was 500BYTES!, thats worse than dialup, right now its happened again and my download rate is 5 - 15kb/s, even if it was a speed cap it shouldnt be that low, not too mension I only use this connection every weekend (when I go to my nanas), so the rest of the week it dont get used

IBangU · 12-09-2008, 18:33

Thats really interesting carl. Did you get it sorted yet ? What are you going to do ??

And the first time it happened how did it get sorted ? What speed did it get back to?

carl2k2 · 12-09-2008, 18:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by IBangU

Thats really interesting carl. Did you get it sorted yet ? What are you going to do ??

And the first time it happened how did it get sorted ? What speed did it get back to?

there isnt really anything you can do unless you ring up and complain but no dout they would put you on hold for 40 minutes,

I didnt do anything, I just left it, after a few weeks it eventually went back to the original speed which is 240kb/s,

heres a shot of my current internet connection

CrowmanUK · 12-09-2008, 20:23

I copied this from the BE forums mate

Quote:

You can also check if noise on your line is affecting your connection by trying
"The Quiet Line Test"
Plug an analogue phone into the Test Socket, Dial 17070 and select option 2 - Listen carefully, if you can hear any noise, pops, crackles, anything ring BT on 151 and report it. You can also carry out further tests and report faults at http://www2.bt.com/faults

From this thread on optimising your adsl line

http://www.beforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=8152

If your connection to VM is dropping a lot it should be on their logs showing that you're continually reconnecting, if the router seems ok and the line isnt noisy it has to be worth getting in touch with tech support to report it.